Margot Robbie Acting Advice

How'd the whole acting thing begin? Who do we have to thank? So my best friend Christian Radford. We've been best friends since we were born. And he told me about this little indie film that was filming on the Gold Coast and he was going to be in it. They needed a chick character in it. So if it wasn't for him, none of this would have happened. It was tricky to balance them both and really it came down to trusting our director and finding the right director in the first place. Craig was the perfect person to do this. He was the only person I really felt that could accomplish this specific tone. And he thrives in that space, I think. Approaching characters that other people might make fun of, but he never does. And he always searches for the truth in the scenario. So it wasn't so much for me to decide how much to give. It was about giving him all the options and letting him tell me when to dial it up, dial it back. He never made us play for the punchline. He's always like, no, I don't care if it's written funny right now. What would you actually do? How are you actually feeling? Show me that. And I really appreciated that approach. It helped us navigate the tone. I haven't actually been given a piece of advice that I can recall right now. But I guess when anyone asks me, what should I do? I'm just like, just do anything. Anything will lead to something else and you've just got to get out there and take a chance. Even if it's unpaid work, whatever it is, it will lead to something better. How do you get to a point where you can do so much with just that look? It's funny because that wasn't in the script and it wasn't planned. It was just something on the day that our DP, you know, we're doing a shot of her before going out. And obviously we'd done the stuff in the hallway with the broken lace and putting myself in the mindset of being at the Olympics and the pressure of the world looking down and all that kind of stuff. And then our DP just said, oh, can she just do one to camera? And I was like, OK, what should I do? And he said, I don't know, maybe put on makeup or whatever. And I was trying to do the clown face, you know, just trying to put the mask on and it just kept cracking. And trying to put it on, it just kept cracking. We'd been filming for a while by that point. All those emotions were kind of bubbling under the surface and I finally had a release for it. I didn't expect to release it in that scene in that way. But it's just one of those things that kind of happens in the moment and ends up making it insane. But any scene where you feel like you're going to make a fool of yourself, you can't just say, you've got to go all out, you need to fully commit to this. Because if you half-ass it, it will look so stupid. But if you do it with complete conviction, oftentimes you can pull it off. So just try to do it with total conviction. And you're playing someone real. So that's obviously a different, there's a different approach going into that kind of performance, I would imagine. Yes and no. I mean, I'm obviously very conscious of the fact that it's a real life person who's still alive and who's going to see the film. I'm also a real life person that everyone already, not everyone, but most people already know and have already passed judgement on. So there was an extra level of intimidation there and responsibility and obligation. But really I just tried to put that out of my head and approach the character like I would approach any fictional character. And I tried to keep real life Tonya and the character Tonya very separate in my mind so that I could let the character exist in its world and not hold back, not try and... I think that one of the main things we focus on is how people try and control their... It's a very human thing to try and control your narrative. That's why we have so many unreliable narrators telling the same story in totally different ways. It's because everyone's trying to control their narrative and, you know, try and justify the way they behave at the time. So for my character to not be controlling the narrative that we're commenting on, I needed to be... I needed to let the character show the ugly sides and the tragic sides as well as the funny and amazing and emotional side.